With the works he had created since the "event" in 1988, Close's use of the grid is more explicit. He controlled the viewers interaction with the image in a more measured way. An increased focus on his vocabulary of marks and colors lends more emphasis to an abstract reading of the image and heightens your awareness of the grid as a structural element. This results in a better balance between the representational, abstract and conceptual qualities of the work.

Over time Close began to play with the grid in which he works, turning it 45 degrees, into a diagonal orientation, and bending the pixels and dots into concentric crescents and squares. In “Self Portrait, Woodcut”, for example, the “pixels” are so painterly that, at close range, the image dissolves into psychedelic abstraction. Even from a distance of 5 or 10 feet, the face does not quite snap into focus.

Created in 2007, this forty-seven color Ukiyo-e woodcut is hand-signed by Chuck Close in pencil in the lower margin and numbered from the edition of 60. The work is floated in a white-washed maple frame.